I expected at that time that comrade Medvedev, the main ideologue of the party, would be an orator above average, would know how to pass his thoughts on to the audience, to impose his own will and how to force the implementation of a given thesis, although perhaps not agreeing with it himself. When, however, Medvedev appeared on the tribune, it turned out that an orator he was not. With a great deal of effort, stopping to look at his notes every minute or so, somehow he still managed to bring his awkward speech to an end. His answers to the questions at the microphones were strained at best, and when he started answering the questions passed to him from the audience on the sheets of paper, he managed to make a complete fool out of himself. Some ill-meaning type wrote in a note, "Comrade Medvedev, what is the difference between ideology and sex?"

Had he first looked over the text of the note and moved on to the next one, remarking that the question was inappropriate, everything would be fine. But Comrade Medvedev made the text of the question public. He then looked up from the note and, smiling with a pitiful expression on his face, said with an intonation of a five year-old: "Comrades, whereas I can still discuss the former with you, the latter I'm utterly incapable of".

Update: this is not the Medvedev you're thinking of. He writes about a time before 1990. There are lots of Medvyeds (bears) and Medvedevs in Russia.

Friends

How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?" — was that it? — "I prefer men to cauliflowers" — was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace — Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished-how strange it was! — a few sayings like this about cabbages.